4 ms·
The phrase "Perl holds the internet together" was coined by analogy with Perl's widespread use as a glue language. You've interpreted it too literally. It doesn
by avar 17y ago
The phrase "Perl holds the internet together" was coined by analogy with Perl's widespread use as a glue language. You've interpreted it too literally. It doesn't mean that you can't set up a router or another piece of Internet infrastructure without using Perl.
It means that Perl is used in a lot of unexpected places, and that a lot of critical things are "held together" by Perl. Even if you think your website is running on Java, some systems administrator probably has a cronjob written in Perl critical to its operation.
- plinkplonk 17y ago"It means that Perl is used in a lot of unexpected places, and that a lot of critical things are "held together" by Perl. Even if you think your website is running on Java, some systems administrator probably has a cronjob written in Perl critical to its operation." In the above sentence replace Perl with C/C++/awk/lua/Python/Ruby/almost-any-language and it makes as much sense. Which is probably another indicator that there is nothing particularly perl specific about "holding together the internet". If anything "holds together the internet" it is the (language independent) protocols that do it.
- avar 17y agoThis whole thread is a joke that's gone over your head. "Perl is the glue that binds the web together" (or variants thereof) is an old pun on how Perl often gets used. Not so much to write large systems (as is the case with C/C++/..) but as a glue layer to stitch them together.